Access to right feed could prove pivotal for sea urchin farmer

Green Seafoods used to process wild sea urchins for shipment to Japan. It now wants to try its hand at raising themWikimedia

A company in Newfoundland hopes that access to feed specially formulated for sea urchins will change its luck.

Green Seafoods did grow-out trials in 2000 but the biggest problem was securing the right feed to increase the roe (gonads) to a marketable size. Operations manager Mark Sheppard says the sea urchins they were raising ended up tasting like what they had just eaten, for instance, kelp or fish protein.

With access to feed developed by Norway-based Urchinomics and Nofima, he hopes this second round of sea urchin grow-out trials will yield better results. The feed is special in that it holds its form in water for between seven to 14 days without dissolving, a quality important for urchins because they take a long time to eat.

“We know that it works in the lab. We are going to do some full-blown commercial trials this fall,” he says.